• A girl sat alone in her room, surrounded by dolls. Each doll had a name on it, a name of one of her classmates. She had an angry look on her face.
    “Oh, I hate her…and her…and her…and she, she’s the worst of them all!”
    As she spoke, she flung two dolls across the room. One, labeled Abigail, smashed into the wall, crumbling in a heap, while the other, labeled Erica, sailed out of the door, tumbling down the stairs.
    She was a lonely child. Her parents had abandoned her as a baby. Her uncle had taken her in, but he was always away. She had no friends at school. They whispered about her in the hallways secretly, but she always heard. She was always alone.
    All the dolls except three sat in a pile. Her own doll, labeled Beth, sat on a chair higher than the rest, wearing a crown on her head. Two dolls sat on either side of her, labeled Friend 1 and Friend 2. She had never thought of naming them.
    “Don’t you think, Friend 1, that Anne is so annoying? Friend 2, don’t hang out with her anymore.” As she spoke, she moved the dolls so that they nodded in agreement. She spent all her days like this, living a better life with her dolls, forgetting about all that happened at school.
    The next day, she got up and carefully hid her dolls in her backpack, as she always did. She knew that every single one of her classmates would laugh if they knew she brought dolls to school. Then again, they laughed at everything she did—so it didn’t matter much.
    At school, she saw something curious. As she entered the building, Erica stood at the top of the staircase. She braced herself for a barrage of insults. Instead, Erica looked at her and then jumped, causing her to roll down the stairs. She was dead. Beth was horrified, but she did not want to be the primary witness and therefore the center of attention, so she fled up the stairs. As she reached the second floor, Abigail came flying through the hallway. She slammed into the wall and then collapsed in a heap. Beth stared at the body. The position seemed so strangely familiar until she realized: it was the exact same position in which Abigail’s doll had lain the day before, after Beth had flung it against the wall.
    Beth realized that she had been given this miraculous power by God—No, she was God. She had all the power in the world. She laughed loudly in the middle of the hallway. People stared and whispered, but she didn’t care. It didn’t matter anyway. She was God, and she would make them pay.
    She immediately appointed people, or officers, as she called them, to do her bidding. She ordered out punishments for everyone—for whispering about her, for not following the strict rules she established, for every excuse she could possibly think of. But soon, these officers grew tired of punishing people for no reason. They refused to harm their classmates, and they stopped abiding by the rules as well. Beth was infuriated.
    “Why won’t you listen to me? I. AM. GOD. Don’t you understand?”
    Then came the old whispers. “Freak,” some said. “Maniac,” muttered others. “Monster!” others whispered. They stood united, all against her.
    Beth couldn’t take it anymore. She whipped out her pocketknife and grabbed each of the dolls by the hair.
    She slit each of the dolls’ throats. Immediately, there was a change in the atmosphere. The fearful eyes clouded over. Like puppets, they lined up in a perfect line, each in turn cutting his or her throat.
    Surrounded by blood and corpses, Beth laughed at her triumph. She had made all of them pay, like she had always known she would. And now, she was all alone.